1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a centralized control system which controls terminal devices such as copying machines or automatic vending machines, requiring field service, at remote places through communication lines and, more particularly, to the same which can accurately decide the conditions of the terminal devices by means of data of abnormality information or functional information of the terminal devices:
2. Description of Related Art
An image forming device such as a copying machine requires periodic maintenance because of deterioration of its photosensitive body, dirt in the interior due to scattering and adhesion of toner, that is, the copying machine needs field service. Besides the periodic maintenance, when a copying machine causes troubles of image defects or the like due to noises such as paper jam, skin eruptions or deterioration of the photosensitive body or other abnormality, a user phones a service company to have the company dispatch a service man for maintenance of the machine. Usually a specialized service company performs the maintenance of the copying machine and also management of copying charges.
Machines such as automatic vending machines vending beverages or tobacco, air-conditioners, refrigerating showcases also require the same field service as the copying machine and makers or service companies take charge of managing these machines. Particularly, as to the automatic vending machine, some specialized vendor companies control goods and the machines, in this case a serviceman makes routine rounds for the machines and takes control of using up of goods and consumable goods and money collection. It is required for the service company to perform centralized control of the machines as the terminal devices which need the field service and to quickly respond to the abnormality.
A prior art system which carries out the centralized control of the terminal devices by a central station unit has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 56-12652. In this prior art, a control device, that is, the central station device receives data of a number of copies by a department transmitted from each of a plurality of copying machines and makes accumulative additions of a number of copies by a department and by a copying machine to store the data and displays or prints them as the need arises.
Further, trouble information such as paper jam and maintenance information such as lack of paper sheets, lack of developer are transmitted to the control device to display them every preset time. Particularly trouble display is carried out by providing the control device with lamps for terminal devices and blinking them to surely inform a control device's operator of trouble occurrence, together with to display the number of times of trouble occurrence.
However, in the conventional control device disclosed in said Patent Application, trouble display is effected by turning on the respective terminal lamps provided in the control device, thus many lamps corresponding to the number of the terminal devices are required to control the many terminal devices, this, therefore, causes a large size of the control device and a high cost of it. Further the number of the terminal devices is limited to the number of the lamps and as many terminal devices as a number more than the number of the lamps can not be controlled.
Further, only a number of times of troubles is displayed, thus the trouble portions or their conditions can not be recognized, therefore when a serviceman copes with the troubles, he can not analyze the contents of the troubles and also can not obtain sufficient maintenance information on whether parts should be replaced or not. In addition, there is a possibility that when a plurality of the terminal devices simultaneously transmit information on respective troubles, trouble information with high urgency can not be transmitted to the center device.
The fact that abnormality is displayed when it occurs is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 59-81656, but practical contents of the display are not disclosed and in this case there is a possibility of causing time lag in notice of the abnormality to an operator when it is displayed on only specified screens.
A prior art system which performs centralized control of the terminal devices by a center device is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 60-263163. This technology decides abnormality of a copying machine and to check the machine's quality by connecting a plurality of the copying machines and a data summation device with bidirectional signals. The system of this application collects user data such as a number of copies, usage quantity of toner and service data such as dirt on an optical system, a number of times of paper jam, voltage variation and the like.
However, in the above application display of data such as a number of copies, usage quantity of toner is not concretely disclosed, and in the case of only displaying these data as they are, urgency of necessity of replacement parts and supplies can not be decided and moreover in order to check the urgency it is necessary to check usage quantity at each terminal and in the case of many terminals much time is required to check them. Further, in the case of only usage quantity at the time of data reception, replacement time of parts and supply time of consumable goods can not be decided and there is a possibility of causing lack of the parts and lack of the goods at the user side.
When an abnormal tone arises in images and its cause is searched for and when only reference to individual data such as exposure volts, development bias volts are possible, much time is required to search for its cause. This is a problem.
Further, existence of abnormality can be decided by collected data but change in data in time series can not be detected, thus the abnormality can not be predicted and the serviceman can not cope with the abnormality until it has arisen and can not obtain sufficient data for searching its cause, therefore he can not accurately make a decision of the necessity of the replacement parts and supplies. This is a problem.
In the conventional centralized control system of this type, it is required to input and set on the terminal side various types of information necessary for controlling the terminals, and when the input and set of the information is large in quantity, it is troublesome.